


We See the Same Sunset

by _hiving (antmaiden)



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Graphic Description, M/M, Murder (off-screen), Rape (off-screen), terminal illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 06:50:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1930833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antmaiden/pseuds/_hiving
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are things that are different yet share the sameness in their cores. Asphalt was made to be crunched under the wheels, jet fuel was made to fly a plane across the sky; but they were born from the same dead organics. </p><p>Nico di Angelo was a journalist, Jason Grace was a murderer of seven people. But they were both going to die at the end of the year. </p>
            </blockquote>





	We See the Same Sunset

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by: Harriet ([diangelonnico](http://diangelonnico.tumblr.com/))

" _Maybe the two different worlds we lived in weren't so different._

 _We saw the same sunset_."

— **ponyboy** as narrator in **t** **he** **outsiders** , chapter 3.

.

.

.   

 **n** i **c o**

.

**3_**

Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women and Comic Tragedies—though the last one wasn’t as widely known—had said something about _writing as a way to leave your mark on this world_. Nico never remembered the exact words for it; but that night, lying on his back staring at the cracked ceiling, he thought about life. And he suddenly really wanted to know what she said, exactly, so he plugged in his laptop and browsed.

It apparently worded out like this:

_“I want to do something splendid…_

_Something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead…_

_I think I shall write books_.”  

He read it over and over and _over_ again, until the light from the screen burned his eyes and the words crafted in his inner-narrator’s tongue.

Three months later found him sitting in state prison’s visit room, a note and a pen ready in hand. A guard led an inmate to his table, a young blond man with scar on the corner of his lips.

Nico found it ironic that, in order to leave a keepsake on his name, he was going to write a thesis of Jason Grace—a prisoner in death row, a murderer, _a person whose life had ended_.

.

* * *

 .

 **j a s** o **n**

.

**4_**

The Contact Visit room had pale green paint and a yellow linoleum floor. Tables and chairs arranged in certain artistic way, several cheap paintings decorated the windowless wall. It’d look like a vast cafeteria if only half the visitors weren’t wearing those orange overalls.

This was the first time Jason visited the room. Back in his earlier years, he got a lot of visitors—his best friends Piper and Leo, a public defender named Ms Ramírez-Arellano, countless journalists and their nosy questions. Back then, however, he was deemed too dangerous to be met in person, and had to talk to his visitors through the phone, a thick glass separating them.

( _when he finally gained the officers’ trust; Piper already moved to another country, Leo—only God knew of his whereabouts, and Ms Ramírez-Arellano stopped coming after the appeal was proven to be unsuccessful_ ).

This guy, Nico di Angelo, was the first journalist to re-dig his story after six years.

“Good morning, Mr Grace. I’m Nico di Angelo. Thank you for agreeing to be my interviewee. Nice to meet you.”

He was one of a kind, this man. Shaggy black hair pulled in a messy ponytail, a faded tan complexion that looked like it had seen better days. _Beautiful_ was the word, and Jason swam into those dark eyes hidden behind thick framed glasses, hoping to find stars dusting in them like the freckles dusting on the man’s nose. But he found none.

Instead, he saw dead meteors floating aimlessly, fragile and empty and didn’t speak to the man’s strong handshake at all.

“Likewise, Mr di Angelo.” Jason smiled at him good naturedly, easing himself into the white plastic chair. “Nice to meet you too.”                

.

* * *

 .

 **n** i **c o**

.

**5_**

Jason Grace got a death penalty for his crime of mass murdering. A few years ago, his name had been the king of all newspaper’s headlines for _weeks_ —he was condemned, abhorred, _feared_ ; seen as a monster in disguise who slaughtered seven innocents in one night of tragedy.

Nowadays though, he was a long forgotten prisoner behind these thick walls of cage, considered _domestic_ enough as to do a Contact Visit instead of the restricted one. No one bothered anymore about his motives (was it a grudge? A mental illness? _A streak of madness_?), the gory detail of his sadistic action was forever buried under heaps of new scandals.

The invisible chains that weighed him down had sucked the young out of Jason’s skin. But his smile was kind, his words polite, his eyes sparked the way a grandmother’s would when seeing her grandchildren after so long.

“I would like to ask you some questions, Mr Grace.”

“I honestly don’t know if I could help you much,” Jason offered nicely, “but I will answer as best as I can.”

If Nico was writing a young adult novel, he would have found his male protagonist and his first paragraph in the five minutes of seeing him alone.  

.

**6_**

“Please tell me about the things you like, Mr Grace.”

Jason looked a bit surprised, one eyebrow raised as though he was expecting a more technical question. Nico waited. Eventually, the blond smiled.

“Mr di Angelo, do you happen to like Roman mythology?” He asked back instead.

Nico kept his pose professional, kept his shoulders from shrugging. “Yes,” he answered carefully, a curt nod following. “I do like them.”

“So do I,” Jason responded, another spark ignited in his blue eyes—this time, Nico noted, it was excitement. The eyes of a child finding a new friend with the same childish obsession. “I prefer Roman to Greek, actually. The Greek mythology, I would say, has a sense of _unfairness_ in them—the Gods keep messing with the mortal’s lives like they’re nothing but chess pawns. The Roman version, while still adapting from Greek’s original scripts, concerns more in heroism and morality, and with the added historical aspect….”

Soon Nico found himself scribbling furiously, following Jason’s passionate babbling that poured endlessly like an ocean stuffed in a cup. Funny how he still managed to remember all of those complicated, intertwined stories—the suffocating air of prison couldn’t starve the ever moving gear of his brain.

Sometimes, however, Nico would stop writing in favor of observing—recording Jason’s tones and gestures, the way his face shifted from one expression to another, the way he _challenged_ for opinion (Nico offered the safe ones). There was something _naïve_ rippling aflame under this man’s surface, and Nico couldn’t figure out whether it was real, or fabricated.

The visiting hour ended.

“When will you come again?”

Nico shrugged on his jacket, collecting his note and pen. “Perhaps next week, Mr Grace. I’ll notify you later.”

.

**7_**

At the next meeting, Nico asked a different question when Jason stopped to take a breath after his long, dwindling philosophical rant about Lucretia.

“What do you think about the future, Mr Grace?”

There was a silence when the thought of execution hit them like a barreling train. And then, like usual, Jason offered him that smile—the kind one that didn’t waver from their first meeting. Nico watched it from one upturned corner to the next, seeking for covered lies, for umbrage, for deep pressed anger. But he found nothing of the three, and those blue eyes still sparkled like dews of spring.

Suddenly it was Nico who was _boiling_ with annoyance.

How come this man could be so optimistic?

“Well,” Jason drawled out casually, “I still have one year left.”

.

**8_**

“Mr di Angelo, do you know about Elysium?”

“…It’s Greek mythology, Mr Grace.”

“Indeed it is. But the Romans treat it’s concept in a more consistent manner than the Greeks. The Greeks concentrate more in physical life— _earthly life_. The Romans believed in the eventuality of afterlife, in rewards after good deeds and punishment after the bad.”

“….”

“Do you believe in afterlife, Mr di Angelo?”

“…Do you?”

“Yes,” his answer was almost challenging. “Of course I do.”

.

**9_**

“I wanted to be a pilot.”

“Pilot?” He stopped jotting down Jason’s childhood memories ( _carefully selected ones_ , he noticed, but he didn’t complain). Jason’s eyes were dreamy when he looked up.

“Yeah. A pilot. Just imagine how wonderful it is, to be above the clouds. Maybe I could even find the palace of the Gods.”

A frown graced upon Nico’s face, a disparaging jab sent out before he had time to filter it. “It’s just mythology. It isn’t real.”

“You don’t have dreams and imaginations at all, do you?”

Nico didn’t answer.

.

**10_**

“Why are you so optimistic, Mr Grace?”

Jason blinked. And then, he laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe I was simply _born this way_.”

Those eyes sparkled with mirth, like waiting for Nico to catch the reference. He did.

But he didn’t show it.

“Why are you here, Mr Grace?”

_Why did you kill them, Mr Grace?_

The sparkle died. The laughter stopped.

“Read it in the newspapers.”

.

**11_**

Nico went through the bookmarked pages in his browser. Re-reading the news websites, the murder dictionary, the half-assed articles of freelance bloggers. When he found no satisfaction, he ventured to the library, inviting weird looks from other visitors when he rummaged through yellowed clippings of newspapers.

They all told him the same thing: _The Madness of Jason Grace_.

Most of them retold the incident in women’s magazine narrative style—unnecessarily dramatic, dotted with subjective commentaries and furnished with a touch of inaccuracy to make the story more appealing. Others were more unbiased—rigid, chronological, a watered down version of an authority report. But it still felt like reading hundreds of versions of folktales. Different wordings, different approaches, different point of views, yet nothing actually brought something new.

_Why did you kill them, Mr Grace?_

_Why did you kill them, Mr Grace?_

One writer was apparently persistent enough to finally get an answer from Jason, but the more Nico read their hard-won article, the more the seed of disbelief grew within him. There, Jason said that he killed them _because he wanted to_. It was clear that the writer didn’t pester more after he gave such remarkable answer, and stroke to write a seemingly in-depth, impressive analysis on Jason’s action through psychological standpoint. Nico would love to call it bullshit.

He remembered Jason, unabashedly flowing on and on about the courage of Horatius and the moral struggle of Coriolanus. How he talked about planes and his unending awe over the night witches.

_Because he wanted to._

That wasn’t the answer from someone who can drone about their passions with undying, childlike fervent.

(Or was it? Nico was violently reminded of Vladimir Nobokov’s lecture, on how sentimental people differ from those who were sensitive: “ _A sentimentalist may be a perfect brute in his free time. A sensitive person is never a cruel person. Sentimental Rousseau, who could weep over a progressive idea, distributed his many natural children through various poorhouses and workhouses and never gave a hoot for them. A sentimental old maid may pamper her parrot and poison her niece. The sentimental politician may remember Mother's Day and ruthlessly destroy a rival. Stalin loved babies. Lenin sobbed at the opera, especially at the Traviata_.")

Who was Jason Grace? How was his mind working on that night a few years ago, when he butchered seven young men and burned their corpses?

_Why did you kill them, Mr Grace?_

How depressing that none of these people tried to get the answer, that most of the times, people didn’t question why a villain became a villain. They just did.

Nico coughed harshly, feeling exhausted and faint all of sudden. He forced his legs to move, dragging himself back to his apartment. He brought his questions into a dreamless sleep after he gulped down his medicines.

.

**12_**

“So? Have you read it?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why do you still look unsatisfied?”

“They don’t answer my question. I feel like there’s more—more than those people talked about.”

Jason raised his eyebrows. And then he smiled, though there was something more than kindness in it this time. It was gone before Nico had a time to name it. “I have to say, Mr di Angelo, I’m flattered.”

“Would you mind to tell?”

“Someday.” He nodded to himself, like he was talking to the person in his head. “Someday.”

They spent the rest of the visit hour discussing about The Iliad and Aeneid. The notes and pen left forgotten on the table.

.

**13_**

In the next visit, Nico didn’t bring his notes or pen. His professional demeanor slowly changed to something more dangerous—more _personal_.

When Jason asked him something he didn’t particularly care about, he shrugged. When Jason objected his opinion, he bit back and stood for his belief ( _no, Mr Grace, Charon has no ship, only a boat. You can check Dante for that_ ).

_When Jason cracked a joke, he smiled._

.

**14_**

_‘The prisoner and their visitors are allowed to have limited physical contact.’_

Since the first day, they used the privilege to shake hands at the beginning and end of the visits.

That day, Jason gripped his hand a bit longer than usual. He maneuvered their hand so that their fingers interlocked, and Nico noticed, for the first time, how his long, thin fingers didn’t match with Jason’s enveloping, calloused ones. The hands of two different worlds. Even when their hand lines stroked against each other, Nico felt like they were a thousand miles away.

Paradox. Jason was another paradox in his life—close, but far. Passionate, kind, and the merciless killer of seven men.

Nico blinked and the spell broke, the warmth of Jason’s hand had embraced his too long. He pulled out, a mocking fire burning the tip of his ears.

“What was that for?”

“I don’t know. A bond, perhaps?” Jason smiled, another glimmer of childish mirth. “See you next week, Nico.”

It was only when he was on the bus, three stops had passed, that he wondered if Jason really had called his first name, or if it was just his mind playing tricks.  

.

.

* * *

 .

 **j a s** o **n**

.

**16_**

The days were getting colder. They were given a thin, navy blue jacket to wear for the outdoor activities. He looked up to the grey sky, watching the clouds rolled by as the others played basketball.

The day to die was getting closer.

Nico didn’t come.

He didn’t come one week, and the week after. On the third week, Jason was excited to be led again to the contact visit room, interesting arguments of Renaissance depictions hot on the tip of his tongue. But Nico didn’t look like he was up for a debate. He didn’t look like he was up for anything save from curling into his too big coat (where was his usual bomber jacket?) and sleep for maybe a century.

“ _Why are you so optimistic, Mr Grace?_ ”

The question was angry, _demanding_. Nico was always composed, neutral, _controlled_ ; and even with him loosing up for these past few weeks, this amount of emotion was still _too much_. Jason reeled in quiet surprise at the accusing tone, at the glare of his dimmed eyes (blackened smudges stretched underneath them like trying to pop them out of their sockets).

“You will be executed in three months,” Nico hissed, as though he was the judge trying to intimidate him. “Why aren’t you frustrated? Angry? Sad? _Depressed_? Why! Why am I the only one being frightened of d—”

He caught himself right then. The angry spark was gone so quick, rolled in by waves of fright. Nico sagged back in his seat, suddenly so small, his eyes flickering like a guilty man accidentally spilled out a forbidden truth.

At that time, Jason Grace finally caught on.

“Nico.” The syllable rolled out like refreshing breath, how he missed to say that name again. “Something is happening to you, isn’t it?”

The man jerked back, defensive. “Wh—what do you mean—”

“Are you sick?”

Nico turned his face away, to the yellow linoleum floor that squawked everytime someone’s rubber shoes grazed on it. It was enough of an answer for Jason.

“Hey. Can I hold your hand?”

When Nico looked at their hands on the table, Jason’s already hovering over his, waiting to fall on his permission. He sighed, defeated, nodded; and as their skin met, Jason noticed just how cold Nico’s hand was, too cold for this time of year even with the grey clouds and the rains.

If this was a young adult novel, Jason would have grabbed it with both hands, warmed it with his breaths and kissed each knuckle like a mother’s magic kiss. But this was real life, what Nico writes was nothing but facts.

“Is it bad?”

Again, the silence was his answer.

“Now I know why you always looked so tired. Why you seem to be getting thinner, and why sometimes you just stiffen—like you’re in pain. That red stain on the handkerchief in your pocket is blood, isn’t it?”

Despite the morbid things he said, Nico smiled a weary smile. “You’re surprisingly perceptive.”

“I am perceptive for those I care about.”

.

* * *

 .

 **n** i **c o**

.

**17_**

He felt like he was losing.

Losing to Jason’s warmly sparking eyes, to his lips that wasn’t smiling but thinned in truth, to his words that weaved its way into him like worms. He told himself to be strong, be strong, _be strong, Nico_ —because he was so fed up of losing every goddamn battle he was forced to fight in.

This was Jason Grace, a murderer of seven men. He was a murderer, murderer, murderer, _you can’t lose yourself to a murderer!_

“….”

“If you are still here,” Jason’s voice broke through his inner chant, “then no one knows except me?”

“I don’t need your sympathy.”

“It’s not sympathy. It’s a mutual understanding.”

Nico blinked. Once, twice, then he studied Jason’s face like he never did before; finding cracks on that positive façade that bleed out grief of finality.

( _or perhaps, it was Jason who showed it to him like he never did before_ ).

And Nico knew he had lost. The warmth of love spreading slowly in his ever aching bones, answering to Jason’s warm hand that covered his like blanket. His inner mantra (he is a murderer, murderer, murderer) washed away along with the knocks of raindrops on the rooftop.

He could care less anymore, and he put his head on the table, close to where their hands intertwined. Closing his eyes, enjoying the feeling of being so close to Jason’s hand. When the other man stroked his hair, he didn’t move either.

“I’m tired,” he whispered, chapped lips leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. “…I just want this to end. _But I’m scared_.”

.

.

.

**1_**

_Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma._

The words were written in black ink, on white paper, and Nico had difficulty to spell it in his head. He tried again, hoping it was some snobbish words with petty meaning like _pulchritudinous_ or _antediluvian_ or _verisimilitude_ —which meant beautiful, old, and probability; respectively. Maybe he just got some kind of food allergy.

“You'll have to start a pretty strong round of both radio and chemotherapy. We’ll have to start as soon as possible, possibly by next week. Waiting could be fatal for you.”

But of course it wasn’t just food allergy if the doctor kept insisting him to take all kinds of tests, getting new result only to undergo another new batch of tests, over and over until Nico had started getting nervous.

At least he was right about the words being snobbish. There was an easier name to it: advanced case of pancreatic cancer.

“If I start all this, am I going to be alright?”

But he knew, even as the question hadn’t finished crawling out of his mouth, that there was no place for hope. The words cancer and advanced just wouldn’t match with the word cured. He was the helpless case of death penalty, asking for appeal only for the hell of it.  

“…with treatments, it’ll be fifteen—eighteen months, at most.”

Nico didn’t know what to say. What to do. What to _feel_. In the end he only sat there, nodding numbly as the doctor explained various technical procedures, thanking him when they were finished.

When he stepped out of the hospital, he had this urge to _run_. So he did. He ran and he ran, rounding the park and the familiar streets, past the shops and the quiet neighborhood. He ran until his throat went dry, until the back of his shirt soaked in sweat, running fast enough as though if he kept doing that, at one point he’d be able to escape his own body and the countdown clock clicking inside it.

.

**2_**

Nico di Angelo had a little sister who just got married, happily chattering about the life plan she constructed with her husband, and had no idea that the brother in front of her had destructive cells eating him away. It was selfish, but Nico decided he wouldn’t tell her, wouldn’t do the chemo (what was the use of it, anyway—it’d only prolong his suffering), wouldn’t make any effort against the advancing death aside from making the best of his remaining time.

Life revolved around him like usual. He wrote articles, he visited his sister every weekend, he watched horror movies save from Thursday—it was documentary night.

The painkillers his doctor gave him were the strong ones. They beat off the throbbing in his head, they subdued the burning ache in his chest. Sometimes, even Nico managed to trick himself that it would all end happily in the end.

( _but then the attacks hit him like a mace, drove him to his knees and whispered tauntingly, we are here, we are here,_

_we_

_are_

_here_.)

.

.

**15_**

Nico watched future sloshed away from him through vomited bile and blood dripping from his nose ( _dotting the white floor and the toilet and the puke like ugly carnation_ ). His chest felt like a hoard of stallions stomping on it, he couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t stand and he couldn’t _scream_.

Tears dripping down his hollow face like sands of his small, almost emptied hourglass.

.

.

* * *

 .

 **j a s** o **n**

.

**18_**

Six months into their meeting, two months to his execution, Jason uncovered his point of view.

Once upon a time, Jason had a sister. A big sister seven years older than him, a parent, a friend, an anchor whom he loved above all else.

Thalia never had big dreams of her own, too busy working here and there to make sure they had food in their belly. She _despised_ flying. But when Jason said he wanted to be a pilot, she punched him on the arm and smiled a lopsided smile, accompanying him on his routine jogs and exercises. When he was accepted in the academy, she jumped on him and kissed his cheeks noisily. Jason wanted to work hard and take her traveling around the world.

But then those seven savages destroyed everything. Thalia was strong and brave, but those men raped her countlessly, tore her soul apart until they couldn’t find the missing pieces. She swore off boys because she couldn’t stop feeling their hands scratching under her clothes. She swore off friends because they stared at her with pity and blame ( _you shouldn’t have come home alone that night_ ).

She swore off life because the judges granted the rapists nine months of jail.

Everyone said Jason had lost his mind when he found Thalia’s body hanging on that tree. But he lost it far long before. He lost it when those rats walked out of the court room, their expensive lawyers guarding proudly around them, the reporters kept talking about _how pity, such young lives had to lost their innocence and future in jail_.

They didn’t talk about Thalia, about her future, about her dignity that was traded for less than a year of confinement.

“They robbed everything away from her,” Jason croaked, choked by his own wrath. “So I did the same to them.”

“And lost your own future?”

Jason smiled and his eyes sparked like spectral colors in the prism. “Let’s say I flew my plane too high, and crashed it on Mount Olympus.”

.

**19_**

.

“This is our last meeting.”

“Why?”

“Because,” a flicker in Nico’s eyes, a lost deer in the wood. “Because you have told me everything. Our business is done.”

_Because we have no more time._

Jason watched Nico closely, how his once tanned skin faded transparent to the background, how he drowned in that bomber jacket that was never again taken off. How his breath smelled like death already, the aches followed him like persistent pests. His time had almost ran out.

Nico watched Jason closely, how his blond hair never washed properly, how stubble was always present haphazardly. His bright colored overall wrapped him almost insultingly, the color seemed to get brighter while Jason’s eyes dimmed. His time was getting closer.

“Then, may I have a permission to hug you?”

Nico’s body felt empty in his embrace, like he was layers of clothes and air and nothing more. Jason wondered if in the future, instead of wasting lives in execution they would have found a way to transfer life essence. Jason would gladly give his to Nico.

“Nico?”

“Hmm?”

Nico stared up at him. The lamplight reflected in his dark eyes, shining like stars.

“We’ll meet again in Elysium, and we’ll be talking about history along with Agrippa, Julius Caesar, and thousands honored soldiers of Rome.”

.

.

**21_**

A week before his execution, Jason was once again escorted to the visit room. Instead of the man he had grown to love, he was waited for by a woman with sad golden eyes, but she perked up when he arrived.

“Good morning, Mr Grace. I’m Hazel, Nico’s brother. Nice to meet you.”

She had Nico’s speech pattern and cocked her head like he did when he was relaxed. Jason smiled at her affectionately.

“Good morning, Hazel. Nice to meet you too.” He sat down, watching as her face clouded over with something more. He pushed his tongue to the ceiling of his mouth to prevent from asking—

“He passed away two weeks ago,” she answered the swallowed question. “He collapsed that morning, and then we found out about his condition. It was very— _maddening_ , but there’s nothing we can do, of course. He died six hours later.”

“I’m sorry,” Jason offered, but it was more of an apology rather than condolence. There was a hint of bitterness and perhaps envy in her tone that he couldn’t help feeling guilty for. “Are you mad at him?”

“I was, a bit. Well—a lot, actually,” she smiled, a thin smile of someone who talked about something unchangeable. But there was strength in the way she held herself, the readiness of letting go. Jason was reminded of Thalia. “But a few days after his funeral, we got this package. Nico made us all video records or letters of apology and stuff and well…” she shrugged that familiar shrug, eyes shimmering in fond remembrance. “…he just knew what to say to make people forgive him.”

Then she pushed a closed yellow envelope towards him, the name Jason Grace scrawled in black marker. When Jason held it felt it with his hands, Hazel eyed him with wary curiosity, as if seeking the same qualities her brother had seen in him.

“What is your relationship with Nico, Mr Grace?”

The phrase, _we were lovers_ sounded a bit too cliché and insolent.

“He was Orpheus, and I’m the mad protagonist of his poem.”

.

**22_**

Behind his closed eyelids, Jason imagined he was leaning on his cockpit seat. No gurneys, no straps, no IV’s injecting poison into his veins. He saw clouds, thick and soft and plenty; and his plane lunged into them, his heart beating in anticipation for the place beyond the clouds. Maybe he hummed to mimic the nephelae’s songs.

The poison melded with his blood. His imaginations turned into dreams.

His dreams turned into nothing.

.  

.

.

* * *

 .

 **n** i **c o**

.

.

**20_**

Nico stood in the entrance of Hazel and Frank’s kitchen, half leaning to the doorframe, watching the couple making breakfast. The room was swaying and he was very sleepy. He closed his eyes and felt himself falling.

He was falling endlessly, his body weighed nothing but a feather. He fell to the pit of blue sky and the embrace of clouds, everything felt peaceful and empty.

There was a harsh blinding white light.

Maybe the entrance to the palace of gods.

.

.

 **j a s** o **n**

.

**21.5_**

_Jason,_

_You’d have to wait for one lifetime to meet me. Apparently people like me choose rebirth. I hope you don’t mind, and wish me luck._

Under Nico’s neat scribble, there was a quote.

“ _As writers we live life **twice** , like a cow that eats its food once and then regurgitates it to chew and digest it again. We have a second chance at biting into our experience and examining it_.”—Natalie Goldberg.

In the dark of his cell, Jason chuckled at Nico’s humor. He put the letter under his pillow.

Seven days to the execution.

Maybe he’d choose rebirth too.

.

.

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**Author's Note:**

> What I tried to get from this work: learning how to write slow-build relationship
> 
> What I did get from this work: a bunch of dead people and quotes from writers and the difference between Romans and Greek. Well at least the research was fun.
> 
> Thank you for reading. Comments and kudos are love <3


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